Abortion providers and reproductive rights advocates were alarmed, but unsurprised, by the findings of a new report showing that threats of violence against abortion providers have doubled since 2010.

The National Clinic Violence Survey, conducted by the Feminist Majority Foundation, received survey responses from 242 U.S. abortion providers. The survey found that there have been significantly higher levels of threats and targeted intimidation of doctors and staff in recent years.

DuVergne Gaines, the director of the National Clinic Access Project and one of the authors of the report, told RH Reality Check that one of the biggest challenges in creating the survey was determining how many clinics remained open after the passage dozens of anti-choice laws by Republican-controlled state legislatures.

The survey found that nearly one in five clinics experienced severe violence. Severe types of anti-choice violence affected 19.7 percent of clinics nationwide, down from the 23.5 percent of clinics that reported experiencing severe violence in 2010.

The percentage of clinics affected by threats and targeted intimidation tactics increased from 26.6 percent to 51.9 percent, and this dramatic surge in serious and targeted threats is seen as one of the most important findings in the survey.

“That is a pretty grave and dramatic increase,” Gaines said. “That is an area that we thought we would see an increase, but not such a huge jump.”

The survey suggested a correlation between threats and harassment against abortion clinics and providers and the amount of anti-choice legislation that has been introduced and passed by lawmakers in those states.

“They are emboldened,” Gaines said, referring to anti-choice activists. “They feel as though they can intimidate with impunity. That I see has a direct relationship to these legislative attacks.”

Tammi Kromenaker, director of the Red River Women’s Clinic of Fargo, North Dakota, told RH Reality Check that legislation introduced by state lawmakers around the country not only threatens to close clinics and restrict access to reproductive health care, but also exposes the clinics to greater visibility and likelihood of harassment.

Lawmakers proposed a host of anti-choice bills, of which five became law, during North Dakota’s 2013 legislative session. Two of those laws have been blocked by federal courts. Kromenaker said both the passage of laws and the subsequent court battles contribute to abortion clinics becoming targets of anti-choice violence and harassment.

Anti-choice activists have often distributed pamphlets or postcards in communities with photographs of and personal information about abortion clinic physicians and staff.

“I’ve never seen pictures of our doctors be put on postcards like we got this year,” Kromenaker said.

The survey found that the share of clinics affected by the distribution of such pamphlets targeting doctors and clinic staff has increased from 18.8 percent to 27.9 percent.

“They Experience Vitriol”

Dr. Willie Parker, a physician who provides abortion care in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi told RH Reality Check that he is “disappointed but not surprised” by the survey findings. Parker said he is glad to see the data support what he knows anecdotally to be true.

“The decrease in the percentage of clinics and facilities that have experienced physical violence has been offset by the direct threats to providers,” he said.

Many abortion providers do not speak publicly about the services they provide, but Parker has been one of the most visible abortion providers in the country. “I approach it from a place of principle and moral imperative,” he said of his decision to provide abortion care.

The Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s last clinic, is one of the most visible abortion clinics in the country, not just due to its bright pink exterior, but because of the legislative and legal battles that have been waged over its right to remain open, and the constant presence of anti-choice protesters outside its gates.

Parker became a provider at the JWHO clinic in the summer of 2012. “I caught the wave at the top of the crest,” Parker said.

Parker believes one of the reasons for the increase in protest activity at the clinic is because it’s become symbolic for anti-choice activists, who he thinks would claim credit if the clinic is forced to close due to state regulations.

The survey found that 25 percent of all clinics report they experience anti-choice protest activity at their facility on a daily basis. “We are certainly among the clinics that have protesters every day,” Parker said. “It has become a kind of site of pilgrimage for protesters.”

Parker said society’s tendency to “ostracize or to otherize” people not conforming to social norms contributes to the stigma of abortion. “The people who oppose abortion have used that and exploited the fact that we live in a community that has marginalized women by promoting an understanding or men’s and women’s roles that is very antiquated.”

While Parker acknowledges the “great strides” that have been made in women achieving equality and parity with men, he knows structures of oppression remain. “The marginalization of women and the shaming of women simply because of biological realities of procreation or reproduction that plays out in their bodies has been quite effective,” he said.

“Shaming is so effective because shaming can reach the places where the law can’t.”

Parker said his patients experience this shaming in the form of protesters who line the fence of the JWHO. “They experience vitriol. They are told that they are bad women. They are told that they are terrible mothers. They are told that they are murderers. They are told that they can’t be Christian,” Parker said.

Parker tries not to focus on the many different ways anti-choice lawmakers and organizations attempted to restrict access to reproductive health care because, he said, it can “wear on you.” Parker also sees the correlation between legislative efforts and the increase in harassment.

“With the increased regulation of faculties, it’s almost as if [anti-choice activists] have been able to hijack the state and get the state to do their bidding, in my opinion, which is an abuse of regulatory authority.”

“They figure out ways to affect the clinic without physically damaging them, which allows the protesters to focus their efforts on harassing and intimidating providers,” Parker said.

Reproductive rights advocates worry about the future and what effects restrictions and continued harassment will have on access to reproductive health. “Instead of going back to the future, I think we’re going to go forward to the past,” Parker said.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/02/03/abortion-clinic-harassers-emboldened-wave-anti-choice-laws/feed/4A Response to Time Magazine: Young People Are Not Fragmenting the Pro-Choice Movementhttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/01/07/young-people-are-not-fragmenting-pro-choice-movement-response-to-time-magazine/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=young-people-are-not-fragmenting-pro-choice-movement-response-to-time-magazine
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/01/07/young-people-are-not-fragmenting-pro-choice-movement-response-to-time-magazine/#commentsMon, 07 Jan 2013 00:04:29 +0000It may be true that the pro-choice movement is "more fragmented than it's ever been," but this is not because young people are clamoring to overthrow those who are running legacy organizations.

]]>There is a lot to be said about this week’s Time cover story, and I’m thankful that others are taking it on. I feel a little awkward about jumping into the fray, since I was quoted in the Time piece (thanks, Kate Pickert!), but there is a big misconception that needs to be corrected: young people are not causing the downfall of the pro-choice movement.

Pickert says that there is a “rebellion” between people who are now in their twenties and thirties and the boomers who are currently leading pro-choice “legacy” organizations (she names NARAL, NOW, and the Feminist Majority Foundation). This is a simplistic version of reality. There is certainly inter-generational tension, but that’s not all. There is a difference in priorities and strategy that doesn’t split evenly among age lines, but instead, often on ideological lines. Organizations like NARAL, NOW, and the Feminist Majority Foundation (not to mention Planned Parenthood) prioritize the needs of white, middle class, straight, cis-women, and work within the Democratic party politics system to achieve their goals. It’s not just young activists who reject the messaging, strategy, and focus of these legacy organizations. Anyone who is interested in working for the rights of people who don’t fit into those identity categories must find other homes for their social justice work.

While I’d love for all young people to be pressuring Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and co. to embrace a more inclusive agenda, the truth is they aren’t. Many millennials work for these organizations even while being lambasted in the media as “lacking passion for abortion rights.” Despite being castigated as ambivalent or apathetic, young people still show up in large numbers for NARAL lobby days and Planned Parenthood rallies. But that’s not the only type of activism in which young people (or anyone who doesn’t fit into the NARAL mold) are engaged. What are we doing? We’re founding, leading, and fundraising for abortion funds. We’re establishing grassroots reproductive justice networks. We’re running conferences in red states. We’re staffing post-abortionsupport talk-lines and becoming full-spectrum doulas. We’re mapping the intersections between our reproductive justice work, queer identities, and class warfare. We’re talking about people who have abortions instead of women who have abortions, and centering our activism on lived experience. And we’re often doing it without getting paid a single cent.

It may be true that, as Pickert claims, the pro-choice movement is “more fragmented than it’s ever been,” but this is not because young people are clamoring to overthrow the boomers who are running failing organizations. We are fragmented because we have different visions for the future of our movement. Pickert chastises young activists for abandoning “those feminist institutions that have traditionally been the headquarters for voter mobilization campaigns, fundraising, and lobbying, the lifeblood of any political movement.” And therein lies the problem. We don’t see our movement as just a political movement. We see it as a movement for culture change and social justice. We do not want to participate only in lobbying and voter mobilization. We want to be involved in organizations that create dynamic, lasting, empowering change that lift up the experiences of those with the least power. We don’t want to be involved in organizations that have pursued the same strategies for decades that lead us to the dismal place we are today. We want a bold, pro-active vision for a future of our own creation. And we aren’t getting that from NARAL, Planned Parenthood, the Feminist Majority Foundation, or NOW.

So we’re creating it for ourselves. If anything is strengthening the pro-choice and reproductive justice movements, it’s the people, regardless of age, who are working outside the traditional power structures and are pushing us to be unabashedly inclusive, radical, and unashamed.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/01/07/young-people-are-not-fragmenting-pro-choice-movement-response-to-time-magazine/feed/4Terrorizing Abortion Providers: The “Other Abortion War” Quietly Continueshttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/04/05/terrorizing-abortion-providers-other-abortion-warquietly-continues/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=terrorizing-abortion-providers-other-abortion-warquietly-continues
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/04/05/terrorizing-abortion-providers-other-abortion-warquietly-continues/#commentsTue, 05 Apr 2011 18:54:23 +0000This war on providers has been going on so long it has become essentially “the new normal,” with significant public attention only when a provider is murdered.

Immediately he called again. I didn’t answer. He left a message on my voicemail, saying, “this isn’t—-(east coast state where Dr. Benton lives)—this is————(southern state where she traveled periodically to perform abortions).”

I didn’t sleep much that night.

The above is an excerpt from an e-mail I received from Dr. Felicia Benton (not her real name). I had recently concluded a phone interview with Dr. Benton about her experience as an abortion provider who travels from her home state several times a month to provide abortions in underserved areas. The matter of these disturbing phone calls did not arise until we continued our conversation via e-mail. Dr. Benton also mentioned that the caller knew in which city she lived, and had even left abusive messages on her elderly mother’s answering machine.

The media’s coverage of abortion these past few months have focused, understandably, on the seemingly endless assaults on the procedure by Congress and by individual state legislatures , who have passed measures ever more extreme and bizarre: e.g., the House bill that allows hospitals to refuse abortions even if a woman’s life is at stake, the recently passed South Dakota law that compels women seeking abortion to first go for “counseling” to a religiously based, anti-abortion Crisis Pregnancy Center and then wait three days before they can legally obtain an abortion, and so on. But Dr. Benton’s experience—which is hardly unique– reminds us that there is, simultaneously, another war on abortion occurring, this one waged directly on abortion providers.

This war on providers has been going on so long that it has become essentially “the new normal,” with significant public attention coming only when a member of the abortion providing community is murdered. There have been eight such murders thus far, the most recent being that of Dr. George Tiller of Kansas, in May 2009. Dr. Tiller’s murder, and the upsurge of aggressive incidents reported at clinics immediately following this tragedy, continues a pattern of the worst antiabortion violence occurring during the administrations of Democratic presidents. (The seven murders preceding that of Dr. Tiller came during Bill Clinton’s presidency).

Apart from these murders, how much antiabortion violence and harassment are there, and at what point can these acts legitimately be called “terrorism?” Certainly, noisy picketing outside a clinic can be annoying to both providers and patients, but such picketing is of a different order than a doctor in a hotel room receiving a threatening call on her unlisted cell phone number, which in turn is different from the firebombing of a facility, which in turn is different than attempted murders, which in turn are different from successfully executed murders.

The Guttmacher Institute, the National Abortion Federation, and the Feminist Majority Foundation are the organizations that have done the most to track violence against abortion providers and each make useful contributions to understanding a complex, and depressing, picture. From the Guttmacher Institute’s latest figures, we learn that 88 percent of abortion clinics experienced at least one form of harassment in 2008, most commonly picketing, but—notably—42 percent reported picketing that also involved patient blocking. Nearly one fifth of clinics reported vandalism. Harassment was especially acute at larger abortion facilities: nearly all providers that provided 1000 or more abortions reported picketing (with a higher incidence of patient blocking) and nearly one in five of these reported a bomb threat.

The Feminist Majority Foundation’s periodic surveys of clinic violence contains the category of “severe violence,” referring to blockades, invasions, arson, chemical attacks, stalking, physical violence, gunfire, bomb threats, death threats, and arson threats. The worrisome finding from the 2010 survey is that 23.5 percent of all clinics reported incidents of such severe violence, up from 18.4 percent in 2005. Stalking was the most common event in this category.

The National Abortion Federation has tabulated incidents of violence and disruption against its member facilities since 1977. Here are some of the totals in various categories: besides the 8 murders, there have been 17 attempted murders, 175 incidents of arson, 41 bombings, 1429 incidents of vandalism, 2057 cases of trespassing, 661 anthrax threats, 526 cases of stalking, and 416 death threats.

While this level of violence would be unacceptable—indeed unthinkable– in any other branch of American medicine, in the case of abortion this violence is seen as acceptable fodder for politicians’ wisecracks. For example, at a recent mayoral candidate forum in Jacksonville, one of the contenders, according to a local paper, said “the only thing he wouldn’t do was bomb an abortion clinic, then….added, with a laugh, ‘but it may cross my mind.’” Even more alarmingly, several states have recently introduced legislation permitting “justifiable homicide” in the defense of a fetus, which many feel would lead to open season on abortion providers.

To be sure, the federal government has tried to respond to the attacks on abortion providers. Most notably, in 1994, President Clinton signed the FACE (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) Act, which made it a federal crime to impede patients’ entry to an abortion entry. The FACE Act has been credited with significantly lowering the number of full-scale blockades of clinics that were commonplace in the late 1980s and early 1990s. And there is every reason to believe that President Obama’s Justice Department takes seriously threats of extreme violence against providers. Nevertheless, the depth of local law enforcement’s commitment to protect providers varies from place to place. The provider community is still haunted by the fact that Scott Roeder, Dr. Tiller’s assassin, was seen the day before the murder, vandalizing another clinic, and though his license plate was reported to local authorities, there was no action taken.

And how, finally, should we understand the frightening calls that Dr. Benton received? Should they be seen merely as “harassment” or, as I believe—given the totality of the record of violence against providers since the 1970s– as one element of a larger campaign of genuine terrorism? Though the three organizations mentioned above have done an excellent job of tabulating incidents on the spectrum of abortion violence, the more qualitative question of the impact of such incidents remains unanswered. In Dr. Benton’s case, though admittedly shaken by the calls, she remains resolved to continue abortion work. For unrelated reasons, she no longer works at the southern clinic, but still travels to other facilities. What is unknown is how many providers have stopped such work—or never started it– as a result of similar intimidation.

]]>Hat tip to EmpowHer: the FDA approved over-the counter use of a generic version of Plan B, called Next Choice, over the summer.

The FDA first approved Next Choice for prescription use in June, and in August, the drug’s manufacturer, Watson Pharmaceuticals, announced that it would be available over the counter. (You can read Next Choice’s drug facts here.)

News to me. I couldn’t find anything on Next Choice in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, or the Boston Globe. Perhaps the media is experiencing EC fatigue after this spring’s ruckus (only the latest skirmish in a years-long fight)—or contraception advocates are keeping quiet so as not to attract the attention of the crazies.

But generic EC is an important development, as Nancy Ratzan, President of the National Council of Jewish Women reminds us (via the Feminist Majority Foundation):

"Despite recent efforts to increase access to emergency contraception, cost is still a barrier for many women…all women, regardless of age, income, religion, race or geographic location should have access to the full range of contraceptive options. The introduction of a generic for Plan B is an important step toward achieving that important goal."

EC is a vital component of reproductive health, the more pharma companies that get in on the act, the better. Our mothers probably never imagined the cornucopia of hormonal contraceptives we’d have to choose from—not only pills (over a hundred brands), but also patches and rings. Granted, the formula for EC is probably less variable than that of the daily pill. But competition is good for our health and our wallets. Next Choice is going to cost about 10 percent less than Plan B, which is a good start. And however contentious the EC debate remains, emergency contraception itself must not be ignored.